Sleep
by Becky Blue Eyes
Summary: Fred can't sleep. Companion piece to Lux Aurumque, but this also into my Nakama Maintenance Workshop 101 AU, SPOILERS FOR BIG HERO SIX


**because i feel like a gray blob**

 **disclaimer: i don't own the copyrighted material within. lyrics are from eric whitacre's sleep, who incidentally also wrote lux aurumque**

* * *

 _the evening hangs beneath the moon_  
 _a silver thread on darken dune_  
 _with closing eyes, and resting head_  
 _i know that sleep is coming soon_  
 _upon my pillow, safe in bed_  
 _a thousand pictures fill my head_  
 _i can not sleep my mind's aflight_  
 _and yet my limbs seem made of lead_  
 _if there are noises, in the night_  
 _a frightening shadow, flickering light_  
 _as i surrender unto sleep_  
 _where clouds of dream give second sight_  
 _what dreams may come, both dark and deep,_  
 _of flying wings and soaring leap_  
 _as i surrender unto sleep_  
 _unto sleep_  
 _sleep (sleep, sleep, sleep...)_

* * *

Fred gazes at the ceiling, and watches the shadow turn, turn, turn again, and no matter how plush his comforter, he doesn't feel warmth. Neither warmth of fire nor cold of ash, only the gray blank seeping out of his eyes down to his chest and strangling what was once an overbearing heart.

When his mother left, it wasn't like this. But then again, she just simply left—she chose to leave with half, she wasn't forced no matter what the maids tried to reassure a crying Freddy darling, she just rose up and left him behind in this house of echoing halls. No, this is more like his first stepmother, who Fred pushed, pushed, pushed again until the cancer rose up and he was too far from her side to come back and say

say what? Sorry most likely, Fred doesn't know, can't imagine the words now so much less than speak them. English is so easily lost on the tongue, fragmenting like splintered wood until the entire thought is a mess and of no use. Like haze, like fog, like the shadows that turn, turn, turn again no matter how sorry he is that she suffered, how sorry that he was such an unfriendly stepson, how sorry that nothing will ever work again.

The clock strikes midnight three times and once Fred spent a year in Asia. Mostly Japan, the towers strung up with arcade lights that his child mind was forever shaped by, but there was also Hong Kong, Thailand, Singapore, Dubai for a night. And going across the ocean with sunset is an easy task, everything is one step closer to tomorrow. But coming back with the sunrise hurts, you try to sleep but no matter how enclaved first class may be the unending sunlight still sears on that shadowed ceiling. The bulkheads glitter, and your nose dries out as your body kickstars in endless afternoon, and you step out into the San Fransokyo sunshine expecting tomorrow yet still lingering in yesterday. Fred remembers not sleeping well for weeks after, still caught on a different clock

he cannot sleep now, not when his clock is still set to eight twenty five, right before they confirmed the time change

time change life change everything changed and everything hurts too deep in the heart to choke out a scream, he wants to cry like he did when mother left but maybe later, right now he should sleep.

So Fred closes his eyes, and his mindscape rotates a thousand pictures for him to burn. His father, always smiling always gone, riding the sun with his three wives who all wave in sync to Fred left behind in these echoing halls. Heathcliff picks him upand they go get ice cream towers taller than San Fransokyo, strung up with arcade lights, and the flavors drip down his wrist but when he licks the itching strawberry away he only tastes pennies, pennies and cauliflower. He spits out one, five, a hundred teeth to the pile of shoes he's outgrown the plush animals he's given away to dying children in the hospital the mascot suit that his friends loved to hate. He calls out hello to Hiro and Tadashi answers, grinning light and gold even as the kamuys call him back to the heath. Fred holds out his hand and Tadashi takes it and Fred burns, a flash of hot breath "I love you dude!" on the back of his neck until the city is reduced to ash, ash and fireflies flickering in the Thai grasses until the sun rises and everything dies.

Fred opens his eyes, and tomorrow hasn't come yet, he can't justify getting up quite yet. There's no homework to be done (weeks ahead of schedule), no fanboard to be trolled (banned on three separate accounts), no comic or movie or archive to glaze his eyes across (the halls echo with all that he's consumed). He turns, turns, turns again but his bed is too soft, the floor is too hard, there's ache spreading heavy in his shoulder and hip joints but no movement soothes him, no carefully laid position on any pillow. He plays his ASMR videos, the choral arrangements and recording of beaches across the day line, and his mind remains in the not-warmth-not-cold

he is blank, he is gray, and it hurts too much to cry about.

Fred rocks himself, back and forth, Kamuy Fuchi accepting a child into the hearth, and he's going to watch the sun rise again, he already knows it. That's why the teachers don't mind him turning in homework weeks in advance, since he's taken to sleeping in lectures and workshops and on the rooves of both SFIT and SFST's hubs. They say he should seek out help but it's whatever, he's seen children scream beyond the capacity of human heartbreak in his charity work and he is far from that level of broken pain. He eats, he sleeps when the sun's out because seventeen hour flights chasing the sun have taught him well, and he smiles for his friends.

He smiles for his friends, for his kids, for his classmates, for Heathcliff, for the strangers on the street, and to his plushies. It's only to the ceiling that it goes away, and he doesn't frown instead, it's simply blank

gray

and there will be no sleeping tonight. Oh, there will be dreams, many dreams of what has been, what could've been, and what should be—he'll replay them forever in his dreamscapes, craft new realities when this one brings him to his knees too many times. Tell him one more time that the gods work in mysterious ways, one more time that there's nothing he could've done because that's a crueler lie than "Your mother's just going on a trip, she'll be back soon don't you worry!"

His mother left by choice, and Tadashi by fire, and Fred's mind is aflight on everything he wants to say to them, on all the English and Ainu and Japanese and German and whatever else that just turn to useless charcoal in his throat. He tilts his head back and closes his eyes, and flies backwards seeking sunset, a tomorrow where he will rise up in color and seize the light and make Hiro laugh

he closes his eyes, and waits for sleep to come; he surrenders, surrenders, surrenders again to the gray.

* * *

 **i'm having a HORRIBLE time readjusting to california after so long in japan and thailand, and i'm genuinely depressed about it. hopefully that came across in the writing, i'm too...i'm too tired to keep writing in the same vein, whatever :/**


End file.
